Flaming Lips Cut Dark, Spontaneous New Album

The process of recording the Flaming Lips’ forthcoming album, according to frontman Wayne Coyne, was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the psych-rock band’s 15th LP, which the singer is tentatively referring to as The Terror, was created under his ideal circumstances: the album, which he has called “possibly the best Flaming Lips record ever made,” was recorded without any knowledge that he and his bandmates were even creating a cohesive collection.

“We kept stumbling upon these little things,” Coyne tells Rolling Stone excitedly of the small snippets of in-studio exploration and improvisation that would eventually make up their new release. “When you get freebies like that, it’s really great!”

But for all its charm, the album, which the band began piecing together during the recording of their recent collaborative effort, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends – they touched it up last month in upstate New York and hope to release it this fall – emerged from a decidedly dark period. During its initial creation, longtime bandmember and multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd was in the throes of a drug addiction.

“It was probably the worst time of his life,” Coyne says. “I knew he was really, really struggling. He was in a bad way.” During this time, Drozd would seclude himself in a separate studio from his bandmates. Paying frequent visits to Drozd’s hideaway, Coyne would discover his friend having penned some “horribly creepy” but exquisite songs. The singer recalls a particularly disturbing tune that Drozd wrote reflecting his inner battle.